Yesterday’s New York Times has a great overview on the the elephant in LEED’s room. The story, “Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label,” by Mireya Navarro, discusses how many buildings aren’t as efficient as they were planned to be, or should be.

It’s a good overview for those who don’t already live the problems and issues discussed in it. Though the article discusses a very valid question, I don’t know that it’s really fair, considering the

Should your building get retested?

USGBC did not even require a LEED building be more energy efficient than a standard building until June of 2007. Plus, both the main building cited in the article and the study of 121 buildings mentioned in it looked at buildings certified through 2006. (Doing a similar study looking at buildings designed and built since then would be fascinating but I digress.)

Anyhow, what I find most interesting is the last line of the story where Scot Horst of the USGBC says LEED may eventually move towards the EPA’s Energy Star Model where buildings must attain the label each year in order to keep it. “Ultimately, where we want to be is, once you’re performing at a certain level, you continue to be recertified,” he said.

This raises two main questions in my mind. First, if that’s where the USGBC wants to be, why isn’t it there now? LEED 2009 has some major changes in it, but it will be another couple years until the next version is released. I understand that LEED is still a growing tool (and money-maker) but if this is really the way it will be in the end, why not just bite the bullet and figure out a way to incorporate the goal now? The Living Building Challenge had some pretty audacious goals as a part of its first incarnation. Why can’t LEED make these changes now?

Which brings me to my other main question. Is the idea of making LEED something that can be rescinded even realistic? While there is no denying that it would be valuable to require LEED buildings be tested every year to retain their certification, LEED is an investment and an expensive one at that. Would it become a less attractive investment from a business perspective if your pretty little plaque could disappear due to let’s say a crummy building manager?… or to a changing system? What if further versions of LEED required changes that you simply couldn’t add on to a building. Would you be penalized and lose your certification because you, or the person you bought a building from, didn’t make a significantly different decision in design?

Maybe commissioning should become a required part of LEED. But that also adds costs to a project.

What do you think?

Yesterday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by David Brooks called “I Dream of Denver.” The piece, based on the late January news on what cities Americans want to live in, calls into question what Americans want from their cities, from density and from their lifestyle.

Reading the piece, I kept thinking about how the descriptions of how people want to

Illustration courtesy of Doug Boehm

live are quintessentially Seattle culture. One thing Americans want, the article says, is a stuffed garage “filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor life.” If that’s not Seattle, I don’t know what is. Then again, Seattle was named third on the list of cities Americans would most want to live in.

This sentiment, of people from other cities knowing Seattle and identifying with it, never struck me harder than at the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2008 Greenbuild conference in Boston when faced with a trio of reporters from the Eastern half of North America. When I said I was from Seattle, all three of them (two from New York City and one from Toronto, I believe) all sighed and said, “I want to live in Seattle!”

One of the New Yorkers went so far as to say, “Everyone wants to live in Seattle.”  Which stuck me as funny because from my experience, everyone wants to live in New York. And when going to college in Boston, nobody I spoke with had really ever heard of Seattle.

The reporter went on to say that once people realize they can have an urban lifestyle … and not live in an apartment, they fall in love.

(Not sure if they also fell in love with this city’s must-have-a-car mentality or the lack of a subway but that’s a different story.)

Cabin

A remote log cabin

The mix of home-life and city-life has always been my favorite thing about Seattle. But the NYT opinion piece points out that urban-living is still an ideal of the young, and I am in that demographic. Even here in Seattle, there seems to be a large amount of baby boomer residents who just want more space, whether it be in another state, on one of the islands or in a more spacious city neighborhood. My mother, for example, recalls the excitement of living in urban Chicago in her youth but now wants nothing more than a remote log cabin in Montana.

Is the desire to live in an urban environment a sentiment of youth? Will we, like our parents prefer to retire in a more remote space? … or is it generational? Will today’s younger generations (meaning Xers, Yers….etc.) still idealize open space and isolation or will we choose density?

What do you think? Comment below or answer my poll at right.

P.S. If you read the NYT article, also check out the comments. They’re pretty interesting.

Wired magazine’s Wired Science blog had a great post recently about Solyndra, a three-year old company that makes very out of the ordinary solar panels indeed. Instead of the typical panel we know and love (or hate) that are flat and mounted up towards the sun, these solar cells are cylindrical and look like a long tube. They also contain no silicon.

The panels are marketed towards offices. According to Solyndra’s Web site, wind blows through the tubes so no rooftop anchoring is required, making them a cost-effective business solar solution (wow, what a mouthful!) So far, the company says it has $1.2 billion in multi-year contracts in Europe and the U.S.

 For more information, see the Wired  post here. Or visit the New York Times here.

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

Whenever a room of business people start arguing about green building, at least one ends up saying government should incentivize change rather than mandate it, otherwise green requirements will cause that other kind of green to dry up.

It turns out that in far-away Germany, a small town called Marburg is dealing with

Coutesy of the New York Times

these same problems. According to an Aug. 7 story by Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times, the decision of the town council to require solar-heating panels has caused some to call the town a “green dictatorship.”

In happened in June: the council switched from encouraging citizens to install solar panels to making it an obligation. It requires solar panels on new buildings, and on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs. There’s a 1,000 euro fine for projects that don’t comply, as of Oct. 1.

Here in Seattle, changes like this don’t seem real. Our politicians put a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic bags from the grocery store and the news and anger generated by the action is overwhelming. A change of the magnitude of Marburg’s decision is certainly nowhere near occurring in Seattle.

But if it were, would this be the way to go? Where is the line between a green haven and a green dictatorship, considering many in this city would already consider it the later?

Let’s take a small break from reality and imagine that Seattle was going to require something like this. I’m guessing solar panels might not have the greatest impact (considering our famously overcast weather) so then what would? Insulation, windows, green building materials, indoor air quality? What revolutionary change would you suggest the city take on? Answer my new poll to the right, or share your thoughts below.

For more on this topic, visit Smart Economy, Support the Warmth, Truemors or the Huffington Post.

Over the last few days two articles in New York Times affiliated newspapers caught my eye:

Spanish Region Limits Golf Development  by Kevin Brass in the International Herald Tribune is about how the government in Andalusia in “golf-happy Spain” has passed a new law restricting the development of golf courses. One of the golf courses there is pictured at right. The regulations limit how many houses a developer can build around a course and require new courses to use recycled water for irrigation.  It’s an interesting story about the relationship between a crashing housing market, “thirsty” golf courses in an area prone to droughts, and houses.

Plus, it’s always amazing to me how controversial golf courses can be. Doubt me? Read Alex Shoumatoff’s The Thistle and the Bee from Vanity Fair’s green issue.

The New Trophy Home, Small and Ecological by Felicity Barringer in the New York Times is basically a total overview of LEED for homes.

The Hollywood house profiled in the article is LEED platinum and $2.8 million. Kelly Meyer, one of the people behind the house, points out green houses can be stylish, while the article compares LEED platinum to Prada… but not all LEED homes, platinum or not, cost $2.8 million. Sheesh. Some are just Besty Johnson or Eddie Bauer. Though they do tend to be a tad more expensive…  locally Pride + Johnson’s Ashworth Cottages (also platinum and pictured below) cost between $739,000 and $950,000. Read my story on that here.

Barringer highlights LEED for its certification process, but doesn’t mention other programs, like Energy Star homes , are third party certified too. And while describing what third party certification is and how much it costs, there is no mention of why it is needed (to prove that everything works like it says it does) or where some people say it falls short (verifiers don’t actually see buildings, just read and verify the documents).

It barely touches on LEED as a marketing and selling tool… Like it or not, marketing is why lots and lots of people are doing LEED projects. For more on this, read the Building Seattle Green blog’s overview of a study that tackles that topic here.

I’m also interested in why the USGBC isn’t asked to comment. Then again looking at a topic like this in two pages seems momentous to me to begin with. And the reporter did cover a lot of ground. Judge for yourself.

Happy reading everyone!